A place to explore questions about Torah, Jewish tradition and how we interact with the world meaningfully.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Justice or Vengeance?

So the other night, at our congregational Seder, I was
talking with a congregant who told me about an upsetting incident the previous
night at his home. He had invited a non-Jew, a friend to the seder, which is a
good thing. But when they got to the part about the plagues, this friend
completely freaked out. How can you imagine such a punishing, such a vengeful
and hateful God?! He asked. And so the rest of the seder was spent dealing with
this one issue: how could God be so vengeful, so mean, and how could we find
inspiration in such an angry deity?

It’s an issue that seems to come up in every crisis, and is
great fodder for the likes of the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins
among others, and it’s the issue of one of this week’s Holiday portions. The
song at the sea and the destruction that builds up to it are recounted, and the
song itself is triumphant and joyful. But is it vengeful? Indeed, one could see
the plagues not as vengeance but as punishment: it was the soldiers of Egypt
who drowned Israel’s boys, so now they themselves are drowned as an act of
judgment. The plagues punishment for those Egyptians who accepted the status
quo of Israel’s suffering rather than strive to alleviate it in some way. But
our tradition does not celebrate the plagues, the death of the firstborn, or
the drowning of Egypt in the Sea. Rather that celebration is deflected,
mitigated. We pour out our wine and offer libation—libation!—to those who died
in tormenting us. We read the Midrash and God’s rebuke of the heavenly court:
“My children are drowning in the sea, and you
sing praises?” Our tradition, unique
in the world, does not celebrate the destruction of our enemies; we mourn their
deaths, even today.

So let me ask this in a different way: what if God had
intervened directly after the Holocaust? What if God smote 6 million, or even
11 million Germans, Austrians, French and Poles: those who perpetrated violence
on Israel—as well as Gypsies, Gays, and other so-called ‘undesireables’—as well
as those who were silent in the face of destruction. How would we feel today?
Would we see that as an act of Divine Justice? Would we see it as vengeance,
retribution, wrath poured out onto the charnel-houses of Europe? Is this a
far-fetched question? Look at the way we respond to the Bombing of Dresden in
World War II. If anything could be called an act of retribution, that would be
it, but we tend not to take solace in that other conflagration. Rather, for the
most part, we see it as a tragedy, more death and killing. We recognize the
divinity of the victims. Yes, we sing praises of the liberators and the
Righteous Gentiles, but we also pause and recognize the burning of God’s
children.

We are unique of all Creation in that we strive for Justice.
In calling for George Zimmerman’s arrest, the parents of Trayvon Martin were
not asking for vengeance: they were seeking justice, for the case to be brought
before the law. Heschel writes: Man is born to be concerned with ultimate issues.
The Haggadah and these verses of Torah stand, as all prayer stands, to (again,
quoting Heschel) overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred,
opportunism, falsehoods. When we sing, “Mi Chamocha Ba’elim Adonai”—Who is like
you among the Gods? We remind ourselves that divine justice—indeed,
comprehension of God at all—is beyond
any of us, and to ferret out God’s intent or reduce our own free will is to
give in to the anguish within our own hearts. And while we desire justice and
strive for justice—for it is through justice that peace is truly achieved—we
still mourn the loss of life and the potential holiness of those lives, in our
seders, in our Torah teaching and in our lives. To do otherwise is to fail to
accept God’s challenge: to choose life.

Our Haggadahs are back on the shelf, the pesadik utensils
back in the basement. But If we did our seders right, those
conversations—especially those of controversy and those that challenge our
relationship with God—still resonate, still haunt, still force us back again
and again to revisit the argument, still drive us to tears. We must continue to
ask the question that the child asks in Torah and our Seder: “why?” And
continue to answer with patience, with understanding, and a healthy sense of our
own limitations. When we do that, we become God’s witnesses, as Shimon Bar
Yochai meant it: you are my witnesses, I am God; if you are not my witnesses, I
am not God.“… In this world God is not God unless we are His witnesses, and
without God, there is no Justice, nor compassion. Let us bear witness and bring
Justice into the world, and mercy, and
pour out our cups and hearts. Amen.

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About Me

I'm blessed to serve as spiritual leader and teacher of an historic and dynamic Reform Jewish congregation, the only one in the state of Delaware. My hope is to make Torah study, worship and music and community accessible, meaningful and engaging. My family, especially my wife and toddler son, continuously bring me joy and inspiration.